Sununu Beats Brown, Faces Pappas in Senate Decider

Can a Trump endorsement win a Republican primary in one night and then lose the Senate in November? New Hampshire just forced that test, pairing Trump-backed former Sen. John E. Sununu against eight-year Rep. Chris Pappas for the open seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. ^{5 6} The primary winners were confirmed the morning after Tuesday, September 8 voting, and the fall contest is already framed as one of the fights that will help decide Senate control. ^{5 17}

Sununu cleared the Republican field decisively, taking about 68.4% to former Sen. Scott Brown's 26.7% in near-complete unofficial tallies reported by NBC News and the Associated Press. ^{2 14} Pappas won the Democratic nod just as emphatically, defeating DSA-aligned challenger Karishma Manzur 64.9% to 32.9% in near-complete unofficial tallies. ^{2 14} Both margins settled what could have been messy fights, and both leave the nominees with two months to explain themselves to independents and moderates who decide statewide races in a purple-leaning state. ⁵

Sununu represented New Hampshire in the Senate from 2002 to 2008 and returns with the president's backing after a complicated history that included past criticism of Donald Trump. ^{6 4} That endorsement unified Republicans and powered the 68.4% win, but the same association is now Pappas's opening argument. ^{6 5} New Hampshire backed the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 and has never voted for Trump, a blunt fact that explains why Pappas is already tying Sununu to the White House. ⁵ It is the classic open-seat trap: what unites a base in September can narrow a coalition in November.

Sununu is running as an affordability candidate, centered on the economy, jobs, housing, health care, energy and groceries. ¹ His platform proposes cross-state insurance competition, health savings accounts, expanded domestic energy and pipelines, cuts to tariffs on building materials, term limits on members of Congress, and ending congressional health-care perks. ¹ In victory remarks he cast Pappas as ineffective, partisan and out of touch, and said he looks forward to debating him. ¹ The message is Washington reform versus career Washington, with debates as the proving ground he says he wants.

Alongside that pitch came a stack of attack lines that deserve careful handling because they will echo all fall. Sununu claimed Pappas voted with Nancy Pelosi on 222 of 223 votes, voted 68 times for tax increases, spent eight years on the House Transportation Committee, and he cited 9% inflation, 20-25% of clinician time spent on regulations, and 3,000 Portsmouth Naval Shipyard workers at stake. ¹ Every one of those figures is a campaign attack line rather than an independently verified finding, and the most quoted number, the 222-of-223 Pelosi-alignment count, is a campaign statistic, not a certified tally. ¹ Pappas has served eight years in the House, so his record can be checked, but voters have not yet seen that scrutiny happen in a general-election debate. ⁵

The pre-primary polling explains why neither side can claim momentum as destiny. The RealClearPolitics average had Pappas ahead by 2 points, St. Anselm College had Pappas ahead by 7, and a late University of New Hampshire poll had Sununu ahead by 2. ⁵ Cook Political Report rates the November race Lean Democratic. ⁵ In other words, the race lives inside the margin where candidate quality, money and the national mood move numbers quickly, and where an open seat without an incumbent is genuinely winnable for Republicans even if it is not favored. ¹⁷

History cuts both ways here. Republicans correctly call this one of their best open-seat pickup opportunities, and Democrats correctly call it a must-hold for any hope of keeping control. ¹⁷ Yet the state has not sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 2010, a sixteen-year drought that has survived good Republican cycles. ⁵ Trump has never carried New Hampshire, and Sununu's past distance from Trump may help him with moderates or may simply remind everyone that the endorsement was tactical. ⁶ Pappas cleared his left flank by beating Manzur decisively, keeping the Democratic establishment intact, but he now must defend eight years in Washington against an opponent promising term limits and fewer perks for Congress itself. ^{2 1}

The honest read is that Republicans recruited the strongest available challenger and Democrats held their preferred moderate, so November is not about accidents. ¹⁷ It is about whether affordability as Sununu defines it — insurance sold across state lines, health savings accounts, more pipelines and domestic energy, cheaper lumber through tariff cuts — outweighs the Trump association Pappas will attach to every answer. ^{1 5} If independents treat the Senate choice as a referendum on prices and Washington habits, Sununu has a narrow path in a state that still listens to fiscal Republicans. ¹ If they treat it as a referendum on the president, Pappas has the lean the forecasters see. ⁵ That is the answer New Hampshire votes on, and the claims on both sides get tested through the fall.